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Sequence of Social Changes

Sequence of Social Changes

Chapter:

(p.299)
32 Sequence of Social Changes

Source:

India’s Ancient Past

Author(s):

R.S. Sharma

Publisher:

Oxford University Press

DOI:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195687859.003.0032

Archaeology informs that people lived in small groups in the hilly areas in the Palaeolithic age. The Neolithic and Chalcolithic communities lived on the uplands in the proximity of hills and rivers. The Rig Vedic society was primarily pastoral. People were semi-nomadic, and their principal possessions were cattle and horses. Although artisans, peasants, priests, and warriors figure even in the earlier portions of the Rig Veda, society as a whole was tribal, pastoral, seminomadic, and egalitarian. Three processes coincided with one another in post-Vedic times. These were Aryanization, ironization, and urbanization. The varna system authorized the kshatriya to collect taxes from the peasants and tolls from traders and artisans. The social system worked well from the age of the Buddha to Gupta times. Then, it underwent a change due to internal upheavals.

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PRINTED FROM OXFORD SCHOLARSHIP ONLINE (www.oxfordscholarship.com). (c) Copyright Oxford University Press, 2018. All Rights Reserved. Under the terms of the licence agreement, an individual user may print out a PDF of a single chapter of a monograph in OSO for personal use (for details see www.oxfordscholarship.com/page/privacy-policy).date: 21 January 2019